Rubbish riles residents

GRAVE concerns have been raised about littering in the Labasa Town area.

The concerns from ratepayers and residents were raised after numerous complaints by ratepayers about the need to have more rubbish bins in town.

Labasa Town Ratepayers Association president Ambika Raj said they noticed there were not enough bins in town.

"We see a lot of rubbish everywhere around town and on some street corners," he said.

Mr Raj said some areas had no proper bins.

"We have noticed that there are no bins at some of the parks here in town and in some places people just dump their rubbish anyhow and this makes the place look bad," he said.

"The town council must act on this and check out those places ."

Food vendors have faced the consequences of littering as a foul stench emanates from piles of rubbish surrounding the market area.

Vendor Litea Sau said piles of rubbish could sit near the food stalls for a week.

"We have customers who come and buy food from us every morning and the pile of rubbish will stop them from coming to eat at our stalls," she said.

"Most of the time council workers will come and clear up the rubbish at the wrong time and mostly it's around 8am to 9am when most of our customers are here for an early breakfast.

"They should clean up around 6am before we reach this place."

Ratepayer Lingam Naidu said they needed to get proper bins instead of sharing only one.

"I own a shop in this town and there's like five to six shops lined up with mine," he said.

"We all use only one bin, which sometimes is full with rubbish, and we have to dump rubbish right next to the bin which sometimes gets blown away," he said.

Labasa Town Council chief executive officer Mohammed Ali told this newspaper that they would comment on the issue later. However, there was no response to questions sent to the council on January 25, January 29, January 30 and January 31.